Greeting the Swifts, March 12, 2012
The 4th Annual Commemoration of Their Return
Written by Tova Saul

Jeremiah 8:7  "Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the crane observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord."

   

      This evening (March 12, 2012) no less than the mayor of Jerusalem greeted nearly 90 pairs of a small species of bird who have just finished their yearly journey from South Africa to return to their nesting crevices in the Western Wall.  Here, from mid-February till June, at twilight, small black winged silhouettes speedily and gracefully wheel and swoop overhead with high pitched cries.

     The life cycle of a swift, which lives to be about 10 years old, can exhaust you, just thinking about it. The fledglings “work out” in the nest, doing push ups with their wings.  They need to strengthen their muscles, because after 42 days, they fly from the nest, and only stop flying after 3 years, when they build their own first nest.  They eat, drink, sleep, and mate while flying.   (After the ceremony, I asked Dr.Yossi Leshem ------Israel's most famous ornithologist and Director of The International Center for the Study of Bird Migration----how they don’t crash into things while they sleep, and he answered that they fly very high while sleeping.  But now as I write this, I wonder---If they are sleeping, how do they know to stay up so high and not crash into things?  I also wonder why they evolved in such an energy-intensive way, when it seems that other animals have evolved ways to conserve their energy.

   The parent birds feed their young by catching insects throughout the day, storing about 2000 insects in their crops ( pocket in the throat that birds have),  forming a “bolus” (a small package), and feeding it to each chick twice a day.

      A swift cannot stand on its legs, or take off to fly if it's on the ground.  It must be at least a few feet high, clasping a vertical surface, in order to let itself drop and swoop away.  A year ago, a neighbor emailed me an hour before Shabbat, saying a bird was sitting by their front door.  I told them to bring it to me.
It was a swift.  I googled "Yossi Leshem" and----- to my surprise----- he answered the phone, and told me to take it to the Jerusalem zoo.  (The taxi was 100 shekels, for which the family declined to reimburse me.)  Shortly afterward, one of the fantastic staff of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory (Alen) informed me that the bird was probably fine, and simply needed to be held a meter off the ground so it could fly away.

Schoolchildren and adults attending ceremony

First our mayor spoke:

Mayor Nir Barkat

He said that just as the swifts always return to their nests at the Kotel, the Jewish people have always returned to the Kotel, to Jerusalem, and to
the Land of Israel, and that Israel is the nest of the Jewish people..

Mayor Nir Barkat

     And then other VIP's spoke, such as a rabbi of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, Naomi Tzur of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and Yossi Leshem, himself.

   He explained the life cycle of the swift, and mentioned how their numbers are decreasing drastically across their range (40% less in London, for example), due to destruction of old buildings that have nooks and crannies for their nests, and replacing them with modern buildings.  Various cities, such as London and Tel Aviv, are building nesting boxes for them to increase their numbers.  One school project in Tel Aviv has built 30 nesting boxes on their school building.

Dr. Leshem would like to reach more people from a spiritual angle to be interested in birds, and nature in general.  He wants to introduce Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leadership to their own many religious values concerning wildlife conservation.  He mentions that there are also swifts in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and also in many old mosques.  He plans to persuade 20 Israeli mayors to implement bird conservation policies in their cities.

Dr. Leshem also explained to a Russian news team how Israeli farmers and scientists have worked together with their counterparts in Jordan and Arabs in the West Bank to build thousands of nesting boxes for barn owls and kestrels in crop fields to control the rodent populations, eliminating the need to spread tons of poisons.

Yossi Leshem interviewed by Russian news team

Here are my 2 attempts to capture the swifts' flights and cries on video this evening:

Just for fun, I took a look at some of the rabbinical commentaries on Jeremiah 8:7, quoted above.  Some say that the stork, swift, crane, and dove, who don't have the capacity that humans have for advanced thought------even they do the will of God by going where they need to go and doing what they are supposed to do.  Furthermore, birds understand that they need to behave in certain ways to avoid harsh consequences-----being somewhere with scarce food, and to behave in ways that will bring them to better conditions------availability of food in a warmer climate.  Humans, commentators continue, who have the benefit of advanced reasoning, the guidance of Torah, and the hindsight of the deeds of their ancestors, should be able to do a better job than they do at living according to Godly laws and values.

My own 2 cents say the opposite:  Animals are pre-programmed to do what they were created to do.  Humans, created with free will, have a much tougher job figuring it out and an even tougher job sticking to it.

At any rate, the swifts are back for a short while.  May they live long and prosper.